The trial of Zenger had, however, already shown that it was not safe to accuse a man of a crime when a jury had already acquitted him. The first number of the _Weekly Journal_ appeared on the 5th of November, 1733; and its editor had from the beginning made war upon the administration with so much vigor that in January following the chief justice, De Lancey, “was pleased to animadvert upon the doctrine of libel in a long charge given in that term to the grand jury,”[474] hoping to obtain an indictment against Zenger. The jury did not share the opinions of the chief justice, and failed to indict Zenger. Nor was the general assembly willing to concur in a subsequent resolution of the council that certain numbers of the _Journal_ should be publicly burnt by the hangman, “as containing in them many things derogatory of the dignity of his majesty’s government, reflecting upon the legislature and tending to raise seditions and tumults in the province,” and that the printer should be prosecuted. The burning of the papers (November 2, 1734), carried out by special order of the council alone, was in appearance far from the solemn judicial act which it was meant to be. The sheriff and the recorder of New York, with a few friends, stood around the pile, while the sheriff’s negro, not the official hangman, set fire to it. The municipal authorities, who usually have to attend such ceremonies _ex officio_, and were ordered to do so in this case, had refused to come, and would not even allow the order to be entered in the proper records, because they considered it to be neither a royal mandatory writ nor an order authorized by law. Zenger’s trial began on the 4th of August, and resulted in a verdict of “Not guilty.” The publishing of the alleged libel had been admitted, but it was claimed to be neither false, nor scandalous, nor malicious. When the New York lawyers who had been engaged in the defence were disbarred, Andrew Hamilton, a prominent pleader from Philadelphia, took the case. He managed it so adroitly, met the browbeating of De Lancey so courageously, and pleaded the cause of his client so eloquently that he at once achieved a more conspicuous fame than belonged to any other practitioner at the bar of that day. The corporation of New York fell in with the popular applause in conferring upon him the freedom of their city, enclosing their seal in a box of gold, while they added the “assurances of the great esteem that the corporation had for his person and merits.”[475]